Scotland: Days 0 and 1

(Quick note: I took a trip to Scotland in April, 2014. After spending an amazingly long time not writing about it, and forgetting which friends I'd told which stories to, I decided to post my experiences over the next few days. I am not back-dating these entries, but know that they occurred last year and that I am not writing intentionally with the benefit of eight months of hindsight.)

I arrived at the Seattle airport at about 8:00 AM on Wednesday. I'm rarely anywhere other than just waking up at 8:00 AM on a Wednesday, but I had the pre-travel excitement that fueled punctuality and proper packing.

It was Seattle-to-Chicago-to-Dublin-to-Edinburgh, and I ended up landing in Edinburgh at about 2:00 Thursday afternoon. Fortunately I was able to sleep on the flights, and I think I caught a few winks during one of the innumerable (note: that's hyperbole; I had two) layovers.

Before I started my trip, my itinerary looked something like this:

• Thursday: arrive in Edinburgh. Nap. Go out drinking. 
• Friday: wander the neighborhood. Nap. Show starts at 7:30. 
• Saturday: train to Inverness. Show starts around 9:00. 
• Sunday: wander the neighborhood. Nap. Go out drinking. 
• Monday: train to Edinburgh. Wander the neighborhood. Nap. Go out drinking. 
• Tuesday: wander the neighborhood. Nap. Go out drinking. 
• Wednesday: fly back to Seattle.

I wasn't sure that I was going to REALLY have six nights of "go out drinking", and the two nights where I was considering taking off were Thursday and Sunday nights... I thought I'd be tired from travel on Thursday night and I thought Inverness on a Sunday night might be kind of slow.

I won't give away anything about Sunday night (it will have a blog entry of its own, though, so that might give you a clue if I just stayed in my hotel room or not), but on Thursday? I was in a cab, headed to my hotel, and there was NO chance that I was going to just go to sleep and rest up.

Instead, I asked my driver if he knew the neighborhood I was staying in and, if so, if there was a bar where there might be people hanging out on a Thursday night. He mentioned the Three Sisters Pub and he pointed out where the show would be on Friday relative to my hotel... it was, as I'd planned, all within easy walking distance.

Things were progressing nicely.

I checked into the hotel... it was a cool location that had what may or may not have been intentionally kitschy decor. I was granted an "accessible" room, which meant that it was slightly larger and it would have been ideal if I wheeled a chick home from a bar one night.

When I got into my room, I was... distracted. I really had to use the facilities (I wasn't going to do it in airports, so I'd been holding it for a while!) and I did my business, and the toilet would. Not. Flush.

I jiggled the handle. I held it down. I pushed it down quickly and then released it. I knew I was tired, but I also had never had as much trouble as I was having getting a stupid toilet to flush.

So I'm standing there, with the lid down but knowing that there was an unfinished issue to be resolved, when I pulled on a string with a bright red handle hanging from the ceiling.

I don't think that I thought it would make the toilet flush magically, but I ... I don't know. It just seemed like something to try.

Predictably, nothing happened with the toilet but it DID occur to me that the string I pulled probably had something to do with the room's accessibility. I tried to flush the toilet again as I thought of the embarrassment of having someone rush into the room, thinking I was a toppled wheelchair user, only to find me repeatedly and unfruitfully trying to flush the toilet.

Instead, fortunately, the front office called and asked if I was OK. I said I was fine, that I was confused by the string, and asked how to turn it off. They explained the reset button location, and I thanked them, went over and reset the system, and then (almost without thinking) walked back to the toilet and flushed it.

And it worked.

I had overcome a significant obstacle. I felt invincible. It was time for a short nap before a shower and my first drink at a Scottish bar.